


A Baker's Dozen

by ladyknightley



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Hermione agrees, aka the best kind of Ron, baker!Ron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:09:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23636593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyknightley/pseuds/ladyknightley
Summary: A light-hearted joke hits deeper when Harry accidentally reveals to Ginny that the Dursleys didn't make him a birthday cake in all the time he lived with them. So, naturally, she has to do something about that... Fluff and nonsense.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley
Comments: 11
Kudos: 138





	A Baker's Dozen

“Something smells _good_ ,” Harry calls, on arriving home. He follows his nose to the kitchen, where Ginny is eyeing a cake she has clearly just pulled out of the oven. “Oh, yum. Is that dinner?”

She pulls a face, and swats him away when he tries to reach for it, so he settles for wrapping his arms around her waist, and they stand there, pressed against each other, surveying it. “It’s for Helen's birthday,” she explains. “Which is tomorrow, and I don’t have time to bake another, so no touching.”

“I didn’t realise you and Helen were that close?” says Harry. Helen was one of three Healers the Harpies employed to ensure their team were at the peak of their physical fitness. As far as he could remember, though, she mostly worked with their reserve squad, so Ginny, who was always in the starting seven, didn’t have that much contact with her.

“It’s this new thing we’re trialling at work this year,” she explains. “We were just getting absolutely inundated with cake—whenever it was someone’s birthday, _everyone_ would bake a cake and bring it in. Gwynog was starting to worry about our nutritional intake. So this year, she made us pull names out of a hat, and whosever name you got, you and you alone were responsible for baking their birthday cake. Everyone went in, all the players and coaches and Healers, and I got Helen.”

“Well if it tastes as good as it smells, she should count herself lucky,” Harry declares.

“It does,” say Ginny with confidence. “There was some stuck to the bottom of the tin that I helped myself to. And no,” she adds, “there is no more.”

“That’s terrible,” he teases, “I’m cake-deprived. You’re a terrible girlfriend.”

She rolls her eyes, grinning. “Yeah, yeah,” she says. “Honestly, though, I’m more worried about how it looks. Last month, Jen brought this _amazing_ cake done out in the Harpies colours for Miriam’s birthday, and when we cut it open, a load of confetti and fireworks burst out of it. This might taste okay, but it doesn’t look great, and I’m not exactly skilled on the icing front...”

For all the tempting smells, Harry has to admit it is very misshapen. Ginny isn’t going to win any marks for presentation, that’s for sure. “I’d never want to eat a green cake, though,” he says loyally.

Ginny smiles, and extracts herself from his arms. “Even though you’re cake-deprived?”

“Even though I’m cake-deprived,” he confirms. She’s digging around inside the cupboard now, and pulls out a jar of buttercream and some candles, each of which are shaped into the letters of ‘happy birthday’.

“I’ve got this—shop-bought, but don’t tell anyone—and some edible glitter,” she says. “If I pile it on, it should hide any lumps, and then I’ll stick the candles on. It won’t win any awards, but it should do, right?”

Harry nods. “Don’t overthink this,” he assures her. “If it tastes good, no one will care what it looks like. I just think it’s nice that everyone at the club will get an _additional_ birthday cake on their birthday. A family-and-friends cake _and_ a work cake. That’s great! When I was a kid, I’d have killed for just _one_ cake. I mean, it’s not like the Dursleys ever...” He trails off, aware that Ginny is looking at him in that way she does sometimes.

Well, ‘sometimes’.

She only ever looks that way—shocked, even appalled for a moment, then quietly, utterly furious—when he mentions one thing: the Dursleys. She opens her mouth, closes it for a long moment, then, when she speaks again, her tone is very, very carefully controlled. “You never had a birthday cake, growing up?” she asks.

“I guess my parents must have, my first year...” he says. “I don’t know, there aren’t any pictures. But then I didn’t have one again until my eleventh, you know, when Hagrid turned up.” He’s trying to make light of it, to move the conversation on, but he can’t be doing a very good job because Ginny continues to look absolutely furious. “You know, on the scale of all the things the Dursleys did, not giving me a birthday cake is not that big of a deal—”

Ginny makes one of her angry cat noises. “When we were kids...well, you know how poor we were,” she says, a moment later. “Some years, our birthday presents were just hand-me-down clothes wrapped up in old newspaper because Mum and Dad literally couldn’t afford to get us anything else. Not even proper wrapping paper. But we always, _always_ had a birthday cake. And Mum never skimped, either. It was always whatever flavour we wanted, nothing too much trouble, decorated however we chose!”

“Your Mum is really good at baking,” Harry jumps in, trying to head her off as her voice rises in agitation. “I mean, that Snitch cake she did for my seventeenth? Made up for all the ones I didn’t get!”

“And it’s not like Mum and Dad were doing anything unusual there. _Every_ kid gets birthday cake. That’s your job as an adult,” Ginny carries on regardless, and Harry realises he hasn’t done a great job in calming her down. “Even if you go to the shop and buy it because you’re crap at baking. Even if you’re dentists like Hermione’s parents and don’t believe in sugar, _you still get a cake_. And maybe it’s not that big of a deal compared to the other stuff _those people_ did, but it is just another example of how they are absolute, complete—”

“Alright,” Harry says hastily. “It’s okay, Gin, honestly it is. I’m over it. They’re the past, now, and I survived, and—”

“They are _terrible_ people,” she says, shaking her head. “What you said earlier about being cake-deprived—”

“That was just a dumb joke,” he says. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Honestly I’m not traumatised by it, I was just kidding.”

“I know, I know,” she says. She sighs, and puts down the tub of buttercream she’s been holding onto, waving it around in agitation as she speaks. “I know it was just a joke, but it is _true_. You _were_ cake-deprived. And yes, like you say, on the scale of all the things they did to you, it’s not that big of a deal. But it’s just so representative of what despicable humans they are. You had eleven birthdays without a single cake—and I assume no cards or presents, too?”

“No cards or presents, yes, but not eleven birthdays—Hagrid came through for me, remember? So just ten. Well, nine, I guess, because my parents must have done one when I was one, like I said. It’s fine, I swear.” She gives him a look. “I guess next birthday, rather than a present, you can just bake me nine cakes, plus one for this year, so a nice round ten, and I’ll be all caught up, yeah?” he says.

Ginny still looks troubled, so he tries to make more of a joke of it by going back to the cake she made for her colleague, which is still on the worktop. “Actually, I could start by eating this one, and...” He flicks his wand at it, so it starts levitating, and he pretends to take a bite.

She pulls a face again. “Damage my cake, Potter, and I’ll make you pay,” she says, but her heart isn’t in the teasing like it usually is.

“Ooh, sounds fun,” he tries, but carefully lowers it back down nonetheless. Then he walks over to her and wraps his arms around her again, and she rests her head on his chest. “Honestly, don’t spare them any thought,” he says. “They are terrible people. I know this. The no-birthday-cake thing was an awful thing to do to a kid, and I used to get upset about it. But now, I’m over it. Really.”

She gives him a look—not disbelieving, as such, but still not completely convinced that he’s not just saying these things to make her feel okay. She thinks its subtle, but he, of course, understands. “Look,” he says, “I have you, and Ron and Hermione, and everything and everyone else, and I am _happy_. And they are sad, sad individuals living their sad, sad lives and they will be until the end. Who wins, really?”

“Well,” she says, “when you put it like that...”

“It’s obvious,” he agrees. Then he grins. “This summer, we’ll do a cake-tasting, or something. Like wine-tasting, but with cake. Much better.”

She laughs. “Cake-tasting! I am _on board_.”

“See, it’s almost like they did me a favour!” he says.

Ginny wrinkles her nose. “Well, I wouldn’t go _that_ far…”

* * *

Her cake for Helen, while not one that sets the world on fire, goes down just fine at work. Harry, meanwhile, is normal. Happy. Busy with work, sure, but he shows no signs of lasting trauma after their conversation. Not that Ginny expects it: even after all these years, she’s still not used to the casualness with which he will announce something totally shocking about his past. Not being given a birthday cake is clearly not on a par with having bars put on his bedroom window, or being forced to sleep in the cupboard under the stairs.

But it still shocks her to her core.

And she can’t shake it. She has half a mind to organise the cake-tasting he’d been joking about, but truthfully, baking has never been her strong suit, and she doesn’t want to let anyone else know, for Harry’s sake. She knows he mentions things about his upbringing to Ron and Hermione sometimes, but she also knows she has to let him drive these conversations. Her mentioning this latest revelation to them would only upset him. So she keeps quiet, until, one day in early June, nearly a month later, it comes to her.

“When do you come off nights, again?” she asks him, over breakfast-for-dinner.

“Wednesday, why?” he asks. “You want to do something?”

“I’m feeling a party coming on,” she replies. “Friday sound good?”

“Sure,” Harry says, “but what’s the occasion?”

“Well, we had our housewarming back in February,” she says, referring to the party they had when they had officially moved in to Grimmauld Place together. “But we never had a _garden warming_.”

“Well, no,” Harry says, “because the garden’s tiny. Not much to warm.”

“It’s big enough for our lot,” she replies. This is hard to argue with: ‘our lot’ can anything from the two of them, Ron and Hermione, to _everyone_. At their housewarming, ‘our lot’ meant assorted Weasleys (a houseful on their own); other ex-DA and Order members; some of Ginny’s fellow Harpies; a few colleagues of Harry and Ron’s from the Auror Department; anyone who’s ever been employed at Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes; and a fluctuating number of plus ones as all of the above get into, and sometimes out of, relationships. Harry somehow senses, by the gleam in Ginny’s eye, that this time she’s means _everyone_.

“The forecast’s good,” she adds. “The garden is pretty big, plus we’ve got the kitchen—and the rest of the house if it comes to it. BYOB, we’ll get a few snacks in, get Lee to play for us... It’ll be fun!”

It would be fun, Harry had to admit. The parties the two of them threw were not usually anything special, really—they didn’t spend lots of money on entertainment, just invited people round, asked them to bring drinks, and left it at that—but this was what made them special. Their housewarming had been ace: why _not_ a garden warming?

“If you insist,” he says, rolling his eyes like she’s asked him for a kidney, and she laughs.

“That’s settled, then,” she says, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ll let everyone know: party here on Friday. Get your dancing shoes out, Potter!”

* * *

Come Friday, Ron and Hermione are the first to arrive.

Harry’s in the garden, magicing up some extra chairs when they apparate in, and he waves them over, giving Hermione a hug while Ron carefully arranges a cake on the centre of the table Ginny’s set up. This takes longer than it should, and both Harry and Hermione watch, amused. “Behold,” he says, when it’s placed precisely how he wants it. “Pumpkin pie and custard cake.” He waits for a flourish which doesn’t come.

“Er…?” says Harry.

“I told you it sounded revolting,” Hermione says, rolling her eyes affectionately.

Ron looks mortally wounded. “How _dare_ you!” he says. “I have spent _hours_ concocting the precise recipe for a cake-pie hybrid, and this—”

“Oh please, not the cake-pie speech again!” she cuts in, throwing her hands up in front of her face in horror. “I swear, ever since he took up baking he’s become absolutely unbearable,” she adds to Harry and Ginny, who has just appeared from inside the house.

“ _You_ just can’t deal with the fact that I’m better at something than you,” Ron says smugly.

“Oh... _whatever_ ,” she replies, trying—unsuccessfully—to hide her smile. “Anyway, Ginny, how are you?”

Before she can answer, they are interrupted by Dean and Seamus, who have just arrived. Harry knew Ginny had invited them, so their presence is not exactly unexpected. What is unexpected is what is in the box they are holding, and the shriek Hermione lets out on seeing it. “Is that a _Colin the Caterpillar cake_?!” she squeals.

“Sure is,” grins Dean. Seamus gives an I-don’t-know-either shrug in the direction of the two Weasleys, but Hermione is all but clawing it out of Dean’s hands.

“I have _never_ wanted something for my birthday as much as I wanted one of these,” she sighs almost dreamily. “But my parents were absolutely horrified by the sugar content and wouldn’t let me have one. Plus, they said it was rampant consumerism when a perfectly good, unbranded plain sponge cake would do just fine. Which probably wasn’t too far wrong. But...oh, goodness, you _must_ let me have a piece.”

Dean laughs. “Of course! We always got one every year for our birthdays when we were kids.”

“Dudley used to love ’em,” Harry says. “One year, he had three. One just for him, and the other two to be split between the rest of the kids at the party. But he still ate the face from both of them.”

“What _are_ they?” asks Ron, looking slightly displeased at the excitement Hermione is showing for a shop-bought cake in a box, especially after she was less than enthused about his own creation.

“Chocolate swiss roll smothered in chocolate, with a white chocolate face and feet, and smarties for decoration,” Dean says promptly.

“That sounds—” Ron begins.

“Incredible,” Ginny nods, and everyone laughs. Harry briefly wonders why the two of them have brought a muggle children’s cake to the party, but then Seamus starts ribbing Ron about the Cannons’ last game, Hermione disappears inside with Ginny in search of more plates, and Katie Bell arrives, distracting him.

“Hi, Katie,” he says, waving her over. She’s apparated into the yard like the others had, and she, too, is carefully carrying a cake on a plate.

“Hi, Harry!” she says. “Thank you so much for having us over, it’s great to see you again. Can I put this on the table?”

“Uh...sure,” he says. He eyes the cake with some confusion, which she sees, but misinterprets.

“It’s pineapple upside-down cake,” she explains. “Only,” she adds, sounding slightly worried. “I’ve never made it before. So I’m not sure if it’s actually pineapple right-side-up cake.”

“As long as it tastes good, right?” he asks, deciding to roll with it.

“That’s the spirit,” Katie says, laughing. “Anyway, how are you?” They chat about inconsequential things for a few moments, and it never seems to him quite the right time to ask why she’s brought a home-made, slightly wonky looking pineapple upside down cake to a garden party. But when Bill and Fleur, and then Susan Bones and her partner arrive almost simultaneously, both couples carrying cakes as well, he starts to suspect something is up.

Susan has brought a very neat Victoria sponge cake, dusted with icing sugar and layered with strawberry jam and cream. It is, Harry thinks, a very Susan cake. Bill and Fleur have bought Victoire (who is to go down a storm: later, they’ll say they’re only going to stay for a half an hour, but will end up staying nearly three, mostly because they get to nap whilst the baby is passed around and cooed over) and a _galette des rois_.

“Of course, traditionally, one only eats this at the New Year,” Fleur explains. “But Ginny said—” unfortunately, Ron, Dean and Katie Bell all burst out laughing at something Seamus has said at this exact moment, and Harry doesn’t hear exactly what Ginny said, though he’s starting to suspect, “—and so I could not _not_ introduce you all to French culture.” She makes her _you’re welcome_ face, but fortunately Victoire starts squawking and her attention is diverted before Harry has to come up with a response.

A few more people arrive: Oliver Wood, looking very sheepish with two muffins he confesses he stole from the Puddlemere staff canteen at the last moment, having forgotten Ginny’s request; Parvarti and Lavender, carrying a honey cake. George and Angelina arrive with a delicious-looking chocolate cake which everyone eyes with intense suspicion until Angelina rolls her eyes and loudly says that _she_ made it at which point everyone relaxes. (When the first person to take a bite from it turns into a large cockatoo for a moment, _a la_ the Canary Creams, she rolls her eyes again and says that she said she made it, not that she wasn’t also capable of creating a Wheeze. Fortunately, the cake itself so delicious that nobody actually minds turning into a parrot).

While this is all going on, Ginny remains in the kitchen, or else when she comes outside, she’s always deep in conversation with someone. At first, it seems natural—she’s always been sociable, but after a while, Harry starts to think she’s avoiding him. Glancing in through the window, he sees her talking in the kitchen with a couple of girls from the Harpies’ squad who have just arrived, with, it appears, a large cake apiece. 

Everyone wants to say hello to Harry when they get there, so he ends up taking up residence by the table on the yard for a while, welcoming everyone and watching the cakes pile up. He starts to feel like he’s ended up at the village show by mistake and will be asked to judge everyone’s offerings. Alicia Spinnett turns up with what is essentially a giant, handmade cauldron cake, and Percy brings something covered in buttercream with rows of sweet cherries on the top that are so neatly arranged Harry suspects he used a set square.

Lee Jordan brings his decks and an incredibly boozy trifle; Harry makes a mental note to not let anyone who has a helping also have any of Hannah Abbott’s Firewhiskey fruitcake. “Half the bottle’s in there, I swear,” Neville says, when they place it down among the growing collection. Hannah elbows him and makes a comment that the other half would’ve been in there, too, had he not helped himself to it, and they walk off, laughing.

The party already has a good vibe to it and it’s hardly begun—the weather’s turning into summer, and so the yard is warm, but not stifling and Ginny’s placed flobberworms in jars around the place which give the yard a magical luminosity. Lee sets up his music, everyone’s talking and laughing, drinks in hand, and Harry’s just about to go over to where Ron and Neville appear to be having a very animated conversation when someone places a plate down on the now bulging table. While Harry logically knows it must be a cake, if only because literally everyone else has bought one, it bares a startling resemblance to burnt toast.

“I’m sorry,” says Dennis Creevey, by way of a greeting. “It’s a travesty, I know. I wouldn’t have bought it, but I was too scared of Ginny to turn up empty handed.” He tips Harry a wink, and Harry grins back.

“You realise you could’ve stopped off at the corner shop and picked up something readymade?” he says.

Dennis makes a show of slapping himself on the forehead, like he forgot something really obvious. “See, mate, this is why you’re the Auror and I’m not. Can’t think on my feet, me,” he says. “No, seriously, that did occur to me. But I wasn’t sure what the rules were with non-homemade things.”

“The rules?” Harry asks.

“Yes, you know, after Ginny’s frankly terrifying invitation.”

“I seem to have misplaced mine,” Harry says, “remind me again what she said?”

“We bumped into each other last week in Diagon Alley,” Dennis replies. “And she’s all, oh, we’re having this party next Friday, are you free? And I said yes, and she said we’ll that’s great, we’ll see you around seven, oh and on pain of death, bring a cake. So I asked what kind of cake, and she said that any would do. But she said she was concocting a special punishment for anyone who turned up empty-handed. I mean, she _sounded_ like she was joking. But d’you remember the fancy dress party, last winter? And what happened to Percy, when he didn’t turn up in costume?”

“I do,” Harry says, matching his grave tone. “Well, we can’t have a repeat of _that_.”

“Anyway, I asked: why cake? I mean, fancy dress at least makes sense, right?” Harry nods, and Dennis carries on, oblivious to his sudden focus. “And she just said, and I quote, ‘I just love cake, and so does anyone with a brain, so why _not_ have a party where all there is to eat is cake?’”

“Why not indeed,” Harry says. It’s such a _Ginny_ thing to do: make up something that sounds like a silly game, a quirk, a touch of whimsy. Let everyone think it’s just because that’s how she is, but actually, make it a secret present to him.

Truth be told, he’d forgotten about their conversation a couple of weeks ago, when his joke about being cake-deprived had accidentally become A Thing. But clearly she hadn’t, and not only has she now done all this for him, she’s done it in such a way that no one will ever know. She’s squared it so that no one will ever know about the Dursleys and their treatment of him, but he gets all the cakes he missed out on anyway. It’s the silliest thing—it’s just cake!—but at the same time, it’s the best thing.

“...think it’ll be okay?”

Harry blinks. “Sorry, what was that?”

“My cake,” Dennis says. “I know it’s a disaster, but do you think it’ll count?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll vouch for your monstrosity,” he says cheerfully. “Besides—and I never thought I’d say this—I think if anything we might have _too much_ cake.”

“Nah,” says Dennis. “No such thing.” Harry laughs, and then Dennis is summoned over by George, leaving Harry free to do what he wants to most right now: find Ginny.

What he gets, instead, is Luna.

Despite the fact that she’s pretty much the last person to arrive, and so the table by which he’s still standing is now absolutely covered with cakes of all description, she still manages to look incredibly vague as she places one down next to all the others. It looks like a fairly basic sponge, except that it’s a rich purple colour and covered with a bright orange frosting. “Oh, hello Harry,” she says, looking slightly surprised to see him at his own house party. “Fancy seeing you here. Would you like a piece of my cake?”

Harry thinks he would rather eat a slice of Dennis’s burnt monstrosity—would rather eat the whole thing—but gamely agrees, then, with an overly-dramatic slap on the forehead, exclaims that he doesn’t have a knife to cut a piece. “Not to worry!” Ron and Hermione have appeared, both carrying several knives and forks, and a pile of plates. “Ginny sent us out with these.”

Harry looks over, and finds her now talking to Bill and Fleur, baby Victoire balanced on her hip. As he watches, she carefully hands Victoire over to her parents, then slides over to where Susan Bones and her partner are talking, saying something which makes them both laugh, then drops in to say hi to Lavender and Parvati, getting briefly drawn into whatever good-natured debate they’re having. She flits in between everyone’s conversations, and maybe it’s just him projecting, but it feels like everyone lights up when she joins them.

She catches him staring at her when she’s midway through a chat with Neville and Hannah, and even though they’ve been together for years now, it still makes him blush. She winks at him, and smirks, and he deliberately looks away, making a conscious effort to refocus on the conversation at hand. Luna is going into great detail about her cake, which appears to be made of Dirigible Plums, chocolate, and Gillywater essence, which both sounds revolting and, according to Hermione, is not technically legal.

“...should let her know that distilled Gillywater is a class-three non-tradeable—”

“What was that, sorry?” Luna says, and Hermione opens her mouth again, looking vexed.

“Hermione was just saying how delicious your cake looks,” Ron says smoothly, and Luna looks flattered.

“You should give Ron the recipe,” Ginny adds, coming over to join them. “He’s a fantastic baker, and he’d love to try it.”

“You must have the first slice!” beams Luna. Ron looks panic-stricken. “Is there a knife? And some plates?”

“Oh, look at that, we’re out of plates,” Ron says, quickly sliding a stack behind Alicia Spinnet’s giant cauldron cake.

Harry catches Ginny’s eye, then they both have to look away for fear of laughing.

Fortunately, Neville comes over and start asking Luna about some new species of Murtlap which has been bred by a team of Magizoologists in Argentina, and the conversation turns away. Hermione starts magically slicing the cakes, and Ron goes rooting around in the kitchen for all the cutlery he can find, whilst Ginny walks around the different groups, inviting people to dig in.

And dig in they do: everyone, it turns out, thinks a cake party is an excellent idea (“But then it would be, wouldn’t it?” Ginny says when Lavender says this to her, “I thought of it!”). The music is turned up, darkness falls, and the drinks flow, and it’s certainly well into the early hours before the last stragglers have left. Ron and Hermione offer to stay to help with the clearing up, but Harry and Ginny both wave them away. “We’ll do it in the morning,” Ginny says, yawning. “The proper morning,” she adds, glancing at Gideon Prewett’s battered old watch on Harry’s wrist. And, after a final round of goodbyes, it’s suddenly just the two of them in the yard.

Well, the two of them and the remains of upwards of twenty cakes.

Ginny lets out a huge, long yawn which leads into a full body stretch and Harry seizes the moment to reach out and pull her close, dropping a kiss down on her head. “Thank you,” he says quietly.

“...mmm?” she responds, snuggling in.

He could brush it off, pretend he’s said nothing—or at least nothing of any importance—and lead her off to bed, but somehow that doesn’t seem right. “Thank you,” he says again, more clearly. She’s been burrowing into his chest, but she stops for a moment, not pulling away, exactly, but certainly not going any further.

“Harry,” she says, very very softly—and it’s clear that, as usual, she know exactly what is is he is saying, even when he’s not saying anything at all.

“Thank you,” he says, for a third time, and more firmly still. “Thank you for tonight, and for the cakes, and for...for everything. It means a lot.”

She pulls back far enough that she can see his face, and her own has never looked so loving. She gives him a smile so small as to be almost shy. “I’m glad,” she says, and he thinks, then, that it is impossible for anyone to have ever understood another person as much as she understands him, and that he must be the luckiest person living. She gives his arm the gentlest squeeze. “It was a good night,” she says, and he nods in agreement.

“There’s just one thing...” she says hesitantly. She seems to be pausing, collecting her words, and Harry turns his head ever so slightly to one side.

“What is it?” he asks after a moment, as she hesitates. He wonders if she’s leading up to a question about the Dursleys, something sensitive and delicate which leaves her reaching carefully for the right words.

“Oh...” she says. “Just...” It happens so fast that he can hardly credit it—but, he supposes, she _is_ an international Quidditch star, known for her almost inhuman reflexes. Still, it crosses his mind that his boss, Gawain Robards, might be less than enamoured to know that the leading light of his Auror department can be caught out by a five foot one _menace_ , shouting “Gotcha!” and shoving the remains of Percy’s buttercream sponge in his face.

He blinks for a moment, pulling his glasses off to wipe them on his shirt even as he can feel the rest of the icing sliding down his face. Ginny’s musical laughter comes from somewhere over to his right, as she’s sensibly stepped out of retaliation’s way, and he freezes in place for a few seconds. The laughter trails away, until: “...Harry?”

And then he moves, lunging towards Luna’s Dirigible Plum cake, grabbing a handful, and lobbing it in her direction. Her shriek lets him know he hasn’t missed his target, even shooting (practically) blind. He takes the moment to wipe his glasses clean, placing them back on his face just in time to see her eyes narrow.

“Oh, Potter,” she says, grinning in delight. “ _It is on_.”

**Author's Note:**

> My thanks to Emily, for the encouragement, and everyone who’s ever re-written *that* HBP movie mince pie scene, for the inspo.


End file.
